US to ease control on high-tech export to China

BEIJING, CHINA: U.S. Commerce Secretary Gary Locke, addressing students at a top Chinese university on Friday, said the Obama administration was moving to ease restrictions on exports of high-technology goods to China.

Locke is leading a delegation of executives from 24 U.S. companies on a trade mission that began on Monday in Hong Kong, and has faced repeated questions about U.S. restrictions on exporting sensitive technology to China, which Chinese officials say are partly to blame for the huge trade surplus with the United States.

He told students at Beijing's Tsinghua University, an elite school for training engineers and scientists, that the United States was moving to loosen controls on many commonly available high-tech goods, while boosting protections on the most sensitive technology with military applications.

"What a lot of people don't realize is most of the goods that are exported to China are not even subject to controls ... and only in a few cases are things not allowed to be exported" when licences are sought, Locke said.

He has criticized the current U.S. rules restricting high-tech exports as an artefact of the Cold War and called for their overhaul so that more countries can by American "dual use" equipment, which can have both military and civilian uses.

Locke is a former governor of Washington state, home to Microsoft, Boeing and other high-tech companies that have pushed for reforms of U.S. export controls.

China is also likely to press the issue next week when it holds the Strategic and Economic Dialogue with senior U.S. officials, including Locke.

In a separate speech to a business group on Friday, Locke said the United States would raise concerns about Chinese market access and investment barriers in those talks, as well as the longstanding issue of China's currency practices.

He said the debt crisis in Europe, a top market for Chinese goods, made it even more urgent for China not to rely so much "on exports to fuel its economy and instead to increase (its) internal domestic consumption".

In meetings on Thursday, Locke urged Chinese decision-makers not to automatically choose the lowest-cost provider for big wind energy and other projects since higher-priced U.S. equipment was often a better deal in the long run, a Commerce Department official said.